The Modern Era of Communication & How these Influences Affect Our Everyday Life
There are four “Cultural phases” of communication mediums purposed by Joshua Meyrowitz, these four phases or eras of time are sequential as follows; the ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern eras. The modern era began after the enlightenment in the early 19th century the Modern era is often linked to widespread printing, industrialization mass communication, and much more.
Print revolutionized the pre-existing social formations that people were born into; ‘local life’ is widespread with the new social organizations and formations meant to provide a common way of life for newcomers. Large scale cultural systems develop to provide people with this needed common society: books, movies, radio programs, magazines, newspapers, sports teams, theater provide for a national, mass culture to which anybody can take part in.
The evolution of communication during the modern era moves at a rapid speed, film, radio, and television following the wide-spread use of print. These communication technologies were for the first time in this era consumed by the masses. Mass communication technology overdrew the local life that people once knew. The social organization arose early on from the use of print unifying all people that spoke the same language, people started to develop nationalism.
The institution is an essential part of the modern era, with the evolution of mass technology mediums and a notion of nationalism people create order and organize society through arising institutions. Sooner than later most social passages in human life were institutionalized for example; hospitals, prisons, military, factories, and one of the most profound education.
In this era the efforts to educate large populations were huge, but for the interest of the public and not individual. Institutional education and free public schooling began and so did the requirement for education, to become literate. Elites saw institutional education as a way they can make advances in society and conclusively control modern ideological perceptions and thought. Higher education specialties became evident as being a need to manage society. The subject of science leads to be an essential role in development in organizing larger society which eventually would begin large-scale projects of modernity, in particular large bureaucratic institutions. The bureaucratic institutions (economic, governmental, cultural) that progressively govern daily life and society as a whole.
The institutions in society if it hasn’t already become clear hold the majority of power in society. The powerful institutions developed during modernity created a hierarchy amongst society, these powerful institutions like political parties, government agencies, legal institutions (courts), institutes of scientific research, athletic organizations, corporations, etc. still occupy most of the power in managing society.
With the managing, organization, and categorization of the major institutions in the modern era had some not so positive influential outcomes. Industrialization bought about many “master narratives” which are fed by the consumerism of mass media. “The American Dream” is an example of a “master narrative,” Soha says that “centralized mass media technology (especially television) are key to the establishment of national master narratives. Values, mythologies, and ideologies can be broadcast to entire national populations, feeding a growing nationalism. Another “master narrative” that was spread with industrialization was the idea of having the most “fit” society, where certain races were superior to others. Science was being used to measure and label the features of different races, to be able to distinguish exactly who was of which ethnicity. The studies were unproductive for the most part and also inhumane, eventually with the scientific information the government imposed oppressive rulings, and even mass sterilization against races, this is called eugenics. Eugenics was used to rationalize the mass racial cleansing of societies “undesirables” in Germany who was heavily influenced by the United States studies on eugenics.
The modern era is an important tool to compare to the post-modern era we live in today. We can see the relation to where our everyday lives have sparked. For example, a comparison to our world today the pandemic and constant new scientific data arising daily, we can look at eugenics and learn from previous mistakes in interfering mass media, scientific data, and policy. The modern era developed our current influential systems in society, institutions. Institutions are a constant now in everyday postmodern society, and larger societies couldn’t function without the organization, management, bureaucratic that institutions such as healthcare, education, corporations, etc. that institutions bring from the modern era.
